If you were arrested for DUI recently, there is a police report out there with your name on it, and reading it is going to hurt. Weaving. Bloodshot eyes. Slurred speech. “Failed” roadside exercises. Here is what I want you to understand before you spiral: that report was written after the decision to arrest you was already made, by the person who made it, to justify it. And it was built from a script.
I know the script because I teach it. I’m an NHTSA-recognized field sobriety instructor, trained to teach the same federal curriculum officers learn DUI detection from, and before I defended people I was an Assistant Public Defender in the Thirteenth Judicial Circuit in Tampa, where I handled hundreds of cases. My newest Safir Guide, How Police Build a DUI Case, walks through that script phase by phase. Here are three things from it.
Three things from the guide
1. The driving cues come with published odds, and they are modest
Officers are trained on a list of driving cues, and the research behind that list assigns each one a probability. The strongest cues, like turning with a wide radius, top out at 65 percent. Weaving sits at 60. A coin flip gets you 50. And here is the detail few drivers ever hear: those odds predict a breath alcohol of 0.10 or higher, while Florida’s legal limit is 0.08. The list was built to give officers a reason to look closer, not to prove what the state must prove in court. The guide has the full table.
2. Only three roadside exercises are standardized
The training manuals recognize exactly three: the eye exercise, the walk-and-turn, and the one-leg stand. Reciting the alphabet or touching finger to nose has no validation behind it at all. Even the real three score 77, 68, and 65 percent accuracy, and only at guessing a breath number. The government’s own materials also admit the exercises were never suitable for people over about sixty-five, people more than fifty pounds overweight, or anyone with back, leg, or middle ear problems. If that is you, a “failure” means very little.
3. Your arrest was three separate decisions, and a judge can review each one
The law treats the stop, the detention, and the arrest as three distinct decisions, each with its own rule. If the first one falls, the evidence that flowed from it, including the exercises and the chemical result, can fall with it. The guide shows how each decision gets attacked at a motion hearing.
Get the whole script
The guide is free. One email unlocks it along with the entire Safir Guides library at thesafirlawyer.com/free-guides. If you’d rather read on the web, the full coverage lives in the DUI defenses section.
And if your situation is urgent, don’t read. Call or text me at (727) 761-4318 and we’ll walk through your stop decision by decision. Every case is different, and no result is ever promised. But the report is the first draft of the state’s story, not the last word.
You’re better Safir than sorry.
About the author
Rory Safir is a St. Petersburg attorney who handles injury claims and criminal defense across the Tampa Bay area. He is one of a handful of ACS-CHAL Forensic Lawyer-Scientists in Florida and a former Assistant Public Defender in Tampa, and he brings that same evidence-driven approach to fighting for injured clients.
